Wha….  What just happened?!

Brandr was dead?  How!!  Why?  What the hell!

My mind went blank.  Slowly, I looked over to Isabella who was still sleeping on my arm.  She was still here, and nothing had changed with her.  Gingerly, I reached out and pinched her bare nipple just to feel the warmth reality of it in my fingers, and she groaned slightly at my rough handling but didn’t awaken.

In a daze, I focused my vision off to the left of my peripheral vision and stared for the party window.  There; where Brandr’s picture had always been before; was a simple tombstone with a simple “R. I. P.” wrote on it.  Glancing frantically to the right side of my peripheral vision, where the slave window sat, there was a matching tombstone where Brandr’s image once was.

She truly was dead.

Tears began to leak down my face, and I clutched Isabella’s sleeping form up tightly to my chest.  What had happened?  HOW had, whatever it was, happened?  Brandr was the most dangerous being that I thought I’d ever meet, short of a dragon.  She’d killed Santa Clause in one swift hit when she chopped his head off, and he was a holiday event boss monster!  And yet, something had killed her before she could even yell for help?!

Yell for ….

. . . . . . . .. . . . …. …

FUCK ME!!  IT WAS MY ENTIRE FAULT!

I’d told her to hush up earlier when I was being selfish and having my way with her!  “Shut up and open up,” or something equally stupid is what I demanded from her.  She couldn’t yell for help; I’d told her that “I don’t even want to hear another peep out of you”!  

I wasn’t watching her life though the party window, or the slave window.  I was too busy comforting Isabella and getting her to sleep.  Brandr was out there all alone, unable to yell out to anyone to try to come help her, and something killed her.

It was all my fault…

I hadn’t felt this terrible since the time Isabella had her magical backlash on the rooftop.  I blamed myself for that whole experience as well, but at least it was something that managed to heal and recover from.  She forgave me.  There wasn’t any healing or forgiveness for letting Brandr die.  Her death is a sin that I’ll have to bare for the rest of my existence.

I wanted to cry.  I wanted to scream and rush out and toss myself head first into whatever beast that had killed her.  There’re a lot of things which I wanted to do.

But I just lay where I was, stunned, staring at Isabella and wondering how I was going to be able to break the news to her when she awoke.  She’d just cried herself to sleep, and for all I knew she’d just suffered from a complete breakdown.  I don’t have a clue what had caused her to break down as she had.  Would she be able to help me find Brandr’s body in the morning?  Would she be safe to leave by herself, if she wasn’t?  

I was, once again, truly and helplessly lost.  My life in the old world had never prepared me for any of these types of things.  I wanted to rush out and see where Brandr had fallen at; find what had killed her and get revenge.  She deserved that at the very least.  And yet, I needed to watch over Isabella as well.  She’s a very emotional and high-strung girl who seems to keep a lot of things bottled up until it just explodes, and I never seem to be able to predict her response to things.  For all I know, if I up and leave her alone, she might end up blowing herself up out of some misguided guilt – much like I’d did when I tossed myself into the midst of Jello Muncher after her accident.

Brandr needed me, and I’d failed her.  Isabella needs me now, and I don’t know what to do to help her.  When it comes to being a man, I’m a complete failure.

Slowly, I disentangled myself from Isabella and started to get dressed.  I quietly gathered up my spike and then eased up and cracked the door to check the doorway.  Isabella and I might be safe in here, but there were others outside who were dependent on us for survival.  I needed to at least take the time to check on them, since Brandr wasn’t here to do that anymore.  She’d did so many things for us, I don’t know how we’re going to manage with her gone now.

I don’t suppose her loss really had sunk in completely to me yet.  I could still smell her hair against my chest.  I could almost feel the warmth and softness of her body as it wrapped itself around mine.  I was still covered in the scent of her sweat , and even though the status windows showed “R. I. P.”, my heart still felt like she was right here beside me.

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Is this what they mean by, “Gone but not forgotten”?  I honestly don’t have much experience with the death of people close to me, so I really don’t know.

Stealthily, I eased out the door and checked up and down the hallway.  Both sides were clear, and I didn’t see any sign of Brandr’s corpse – or any sign that Jello Muncher was in the hall and that it might have been it, that she’d somehow had stumbled into.  Mother knows; that out all of the ways for her to die, I hope that’s not the one that actually happened!  Jello munching on me was the slowest and most excruciating way that I’ve died so far, out of all my deaths.  It’s not a fate that I’d wish on anyone – especially not someone I cared for!

Quickly and quietly, I worked my way down the hall and to the roof, checking in each room as I passed by.  The goblins, Buster, and girls were all sleeping as normal.  Nothing seemed out of place along the hall, and a quick glance around the rooftop didn’t show any sign of disturbance.  I would imagine that Brandr would’ve put up a fight with whatever had killed her, and there’d be some sign of battle, and at least her corpse left over – but there wasn’t anything to indicate such an occurrence anywhere on the rooftop.

Working my way back into the building, I eased down the hallway and peeked into each room once more to make certain that all was safe.  From what I could tell, our little corner of the school was much the same as always; nothing really seemed out of place to me.  When I got back to the teacher’s lounge, I cracked the door open and checked on Isabella.  She was tossing and restless, but still safe and sleeping.  I wanted to go in and comfort her, but I needed to finish looking around first.  If Jello had somehow managed to kill Brandr, it’d take time to digest her corpse.  I might not be able to stop it from eating her, but at least I’d know what had happened, and that’d at least be something more than what I knew now.

Quietly, I eased the door back shut and worked my way on down the hall towards the janitor’s closet.  I glanced left and right into each room as I passed them by, and nothing seemed obviously different to me in the dark.  Finally, I rounded the corner at the far end of the hall, and started down the hall to the barricade.  By the time I’d covered the whole distance to the barricade, I still hadn’t seen any sign of Jello Muncher, Brandr’s corpse, or any sign of battle.

Just what the hell had happened?  How and where did she die?  I’d covered the main area that we usually considered to be “ours”.  Had she somehow decided to scout past the barricade, once again?  It was something that she’d did a hundred times in the past for us, to make certain that nothing major had changed with the candy monsters or the halls that we’d already searched and cleared.

I hesitated at going through the crack in the barricade on my own and leaving Isabella and the others alone so long, but in the end, my curiosity got the best of me.  I wiggled through the crack in the hall and was almost immediately awarded with the sight of fresh blood.  There was a trail where something had been dragged from the central hallway here, down into the first tunnel on the left.

Into the tunnel that had rattled my nerves and seemed so unnaturally fearsome.  

We’d been searching and clearing the candy goblins from the right side of the hallway so far, and truthfully, I’d been trying to avoid even looking down that passageway.  The fear I’d felt while wandering through it with Isabella still had a grip on my heart, and apparently my cowardice had let something nasty climb up from its depths and destroy Brandr.  Slowly, I worked my way back through the crawl hole in the barricade and made my way back to the room with Isabella.

I wasn’t going to storm off in a blind rage like I’d did the time when Isabella had her magical backlash.  Isabella needed me.  The goblins, stupid dog, and girls needed me.  I had to stay and watch over them for the night.  But, once the sun comes up, and Isabella awakes and  I can be certain that she’s going to be fine, I’m going to conquer my fear – I’m going to shine the light of my anger into that tunnel of fear; darkness be damned!  

I’ve got to know what happened to Brandr!